Henry Miller quotes - page 4

I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over. (Henry Miller)
Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.
Henry Miller
I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.
Henry Miller
My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.
Henry Miller
What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?
Henry Miller
Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.
Henry Miller
The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment.
Henry Miller
Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.
Henry Miller
There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of our time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.
Henry Miller
The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
Henry Miller
But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here. (Henry Miller)
Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it.
Henry Miller
Often, when following the trail which meanders over the hills, I pull myself up in an effort to encompass the glory and the grandeur which envelops the whole horizon. Often, when the clouds pile up in the north and the sea is churned with white caps, I say to myself: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look."
Henry Miller
We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.
Henry Miller
The history of the world is the history of a privileged few.
Henry Miller
There's nothing wrong with the world. What's wrong is our way of looking at it.
Henry Miller
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Henry Miller
Its good to be just plain happy its a little better to know that youre happy but to understand that youre happy and to know why and how and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.
Henry Miller
This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.
Henry Miller
To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth-I count that something of a miracle.
Henry Miller
The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order. (Henry Miller)
Who wants to live to be a hundred What's the point of it A short life and a merry one is far better than a long life sustained by fear, caution and perpetual medical surveillance.
Henry Miller
One day, during one of their sessions, Gurdjieff tells Peters to look out the window and describe what he sees. 'An oak tree' the child answers. 'And what do you see on the oak tree?' 'Acorns' Peters replies. 'How many of these acorns do you suppose will become trees?' Fritz Peters is stumped, [-] 'Maybe five or six?' 'No' retorts Gurdjieff. 'Only one will become a tree, perhaps, none! Nature is always very giving, but it only gives possibility. It takes hard work and great effort to become a tree or a genuine man.'
Henry Miller
Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.
Henry Miller
Through it all I learned the value of being humble to the dust, reduced to ashes. Everyone should experience that. Before you can recognize you're somebody, you have to know you're nobody. [-] The butterfly was just a lowly worm in its beginning. The worm didn't live with the moment-to-moment expectation of sprouting wings and taking flight. He lived a useful and productive life, the life of a worm. And he had to die a worm in order to be born as an angel! The spinning of the cocoon is, in and of itself, remarkable. It is as wondrous as the emergence and first flight of the butterfly.
Henry Miller